From: Rainer
Subject: Rainer's Europe Trip 1998 -- part 23
Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 18:44:16 EDT

Friday, 10/16 -- part 23

The short night was shortened by my waking up early.  Vera and Monika had
slept through the 0600 church bell concert outside our window.  I guess
they were getting used to it.  I decided to check what I'd written the
night before, run it through the spell checker, that sort of thing.  The
laptop froze up and had to be restarted.  When it came back, the file I
had been working on was empty.  All of a sudden I'd lost the desire to
write anymore.  Stupid PC.  But, that's over with now.

As gloomy as I felt inside, it was another sunny day outside, however.
Vera and I had breakfast at the hotel.  Monika wanted to sleep in and
she'd tired of the continental breakfast fare.  On our way out of
Triesenberg we stopped at you-can-guess-where for some blueberry muffins
and donuts.

We left Liechtenstein and headed for Interlaken.  The autobahn through
the Alps is great.  When in the wide valleys, the scenery is staggering.
When in the mountains, you don't see a thing since you drive through
tunnels.  We'd checked the maps before we left, even used the European
equivalent of Street Atlas USA on the laptop to verify the route.  We
did okay until we got near Zug.  We recovered much better than in Berlin
and got on the mountain highway to Interlaken.  The Alps here were quite
hazy.

We passed several long and probably deep Alpine lakes.  The little
village of Iseltwald beckoned as we drove by one of these lakes and we
stopped for pictures and lunch.  The Super Grill food vendor set up by
the lake provided an unexpectedly delicious menu.  We fed a mute swan
some bread as it swam passed our table by the lake's edge.  You could
hear and see the electric trains across the lake heading in and our of
Interlaken.  You could hear the cow bells on the hills.  It was very
pretty here and much warmer that I had expected -- especially for
October.

Interlaken reminds me a bit of Colorado near Silverton or Durango, but
it's at a much lower elevation.  The Hotel Beau-Site that we picked out
of a hotel guide in Liechtenstein proved easy to find.  We didn't pick
the hotel because of it's name.  We picked it because of it's view.  Two
adjoining rooms on the second floor looked out upon two of the three
snow capped peaks, Jungfrau and Moench.  The Eiger was hidden by
intervening mountains.  Although the mountains around the town of
Interlaken seemed high, none were covered by snow -- expect for the
snow capped peaks I just mentioned.  Very unlike Mittenwald or Ehrwald.
Although the hotel had a great view, we were not to spend very much time
in the rooms.  We were planning to go into the mountains tomorrow
keeping our fingers crossed that the beautiful weather would hold.  It
was pretty late in the afternoon now so we parked the car downvillage
(downtown seems wrong) and explored.  The hotel had the funny Swiss
phones so we kept our eyes open for some sort of computer place.

We inquired at the post office -- center of much telecommunications in
Europe and got an address.  We found Buddy's Pub and Internet Cafe --
but their internet access was broken.   We also found a little computer
shop that was only open from 1800-2100.  We noted the address and
continued exploring.  We passed a Mexican restaurant and it was a
no-brainer that this is where we would have dinner later.

There were dozen or more paragliders that must have launched off a
nearby alp and which landed in a field in downvillage Interlaken.  Some
were riding double.  I pictured Mike Stanbro riding in on one of these.

I had to make a detour back to the parking lot.  Your only allowed to
put 90 minutes on the meter, and the meters are running until 1900.  We
stopped for a beer and wine on one of the many sidewalk cafes.  Even
though the sun was behind the mountains now, it was still T-shirt
weather.  This brings up another thing we noticed:  not very many people
wear T-shirts in Europe.  Jeans, yes.  T-shirts, no.  Oh well, we stand
out that way.  Plus, hardly anyone wears shorts.  In fact, people all
over Europe are dressed much too warmly.  While we're walking around
feeling warm in T-shirts and jeans, people have on long-sleeved shirts,
sweaters, and long coats.  It really is bizarre.

We found the Mexican restaurant back, noted that Italian music was
playing in the background and ordered from the waitress who was working
here in Switzerland but was really Swedish and who spoke English better
than she did German.  Needless to say, the Mexican food was not what us
Oregonians expected.  After dinner we visited the computer store that
was now open.  The young man working there tried everything to hook up
the laptop to his ISDN lines, but nothing worked.  Monika was able to
send some email to her friends and discovered that keyboards in Europe
are not like keyboards in the US. Interchanging the Y and Z keys makes
for weird touch-typing.  It was a fun visit nonetheless.  We paid for
the access and got a business card -- for all our friends that need
computer access in Interlaken.

Back at the hotel I sacked out early and have no real idea what the rest
of my family did on their respective surfaces.